Yesterday was a day of reflection for me. We have plans to
move and I have begun to clean out things we don’t need. Along with that comes
discovering things you have. My daughter kept me company while I sifted through
boxes full of random stuff and my little man played contently in the dirt, without
eating it for once.
Books,
pictures, drawings from my older kids when they were little, and lots of
memories came flowing back. Some things carried a memory with it but at 35
years old there was no chance I would recall what the memory was. Or we would find
something that gave me a small glimpse like a beach would come to mind and an
hour later I would remember a family trip the item came from. Thank God for
that hour later or it may have driven me crazy trying to recall.
In the
bottom of one box I found a couple of old cassette tapes from very early on in
my childhood. My grandmother on my dad’s side would read books and tell
stories. She would record herself and send it in the mail. My grandmother was a
very powerful source in my life and passed when I was a teenager, a selfish
teenager who never took the time to let her know how she impacted my life. I
still remember her like it was yesterday. Her kind lap to sit on and listen to
stories she had memorized from books and the enthusiasm she would have when she
told those stories that would not allow my mind to wander away from the places
her stories took me. To me she had super
powers for being able to hold onto my mind the way she did and even though she
was stern and didn’t take any guff, she had a nature that made a child feel safe
and home. Even if it was just a visit with her I always felt like she gave me a
gateway to a world inside books. She encouraged me to write and write a lot and
never stop using my imagination. Until my teenage years hit that is exactly
what I did because she had shown me it was a way to slow my mind down.
I don’t think my grandmother ever knew how she affected me this
way. Even when I come across an old book that may be worth holding onto, I
have a rule of thumb. If grandma would have encouraged me to read it, it’s worth
keeping. She never knew my mind was always running circles and if she would have
it wouldn’t have mattered to her. She would have treated me the same way with
no excuses.
I put
one of those tapes in my cassette player, and yes I still have one, and there
she was. Her enthusiasm and storytelling came right back to me years later. The
smile on my face was literally because it was as easy as hearing her voice
again to take me back 25 years or more and feel that encouragement all over
again. At the same time I looked at my autistic son whose mind is much busier
than mine ever was and remembered an important lesson grandma didn’t know she
taught me. Every child has unstoppable abilities no matter what obstacles are
in the way. They just need a cozy lap to sit on and a quiet voice to help them
pull it out and use it. No matter what the world has labeled us with, the ability should never be overlooked.
What if we lived in a world we didn't label what is considered a flaw and only had labels that gave everyone a warning as to what we are capable of?
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